Cuba 1998 – a 35mm film retrospective
Found myself in Havana, Cuba with former New Millennium features editor Sarah Keen, back in the spring of 1998, shortly before my photography “went digital”.
The dancers
Everyone has heard of Club Tropicana which flourishes in Havana and has just finished a tour of the UK But most Cuban hotels provide their own dancers and bands. The Hotel Commodoro for example has its own night club and entertainers. Their floor show is called Sabor Cubano – Flavour of Cuba.
The four dancers, Caridad, Ivonne, Jamira and Indira had all graduated from the School of Dance in Havana and had been working together for the year before we photographed them. They provide a lively mixture of Caribbean, Salsa, Bolero and Cuban dance and songs. The girls sweep and swirl in a blaze of colour. The costumes are designed and made by themselves. The climax to the show is the a dance called la chancleta – clog dancing. The dance and songs refer to life on the plantations and the work. The sound of the clogs echo the calls of life and the rhythm of the dance.
Before you can recover your breath, nine more vibrant women sweep onto the stage Led by drums their nine voices sound more like ninety. Their music is strong, confident and complex, driven by a fast rhythm. The Rumba and Salsa are irresistible. Above the music their voices call and repeat chorus and folk chants. Throughout the set there are hypnotic drum beats which hark back to their African history. The culture and tradition of the people is in this music. This is Cuba at its most beautiful and best.
This has been posted retrospectively. This images were originally taken and scanned from 35mm film to appear in articles I was writing at the time. A few appeared in the New Millennium ezine. But most were uploaded into the old Coppermine media library and forgotten, So I dug them out of the archives, cleaned them up a bit and reposted them all here.